I picked up a copy of Dr. Seuss' The Cat in the Hat for my son at a car boot sale a few months ago. On reading it with him, I recalled having done so with my own father, always demanding it, treasuring it as my favourite book.
Putting aside doubts over its literary merits, sometimes clunky versification and the advances since then in children's poetry, I was struck once more by its vibrant language, by how it relishes playing with words, by how it transmits that infectious enjoyment to young readers. In other words, I'm now piecing back together part of the process that led to my falling in love with poetry. Our children so often help us to view afresh our own upbringing.
In Denise Riley’s recent short collection of essays, A Chorus of Ears
(Picador), she reflects on the way the persona of the poet frequently gets
in the way...
